Most Physician Spouses/Partners Are Happy

Despite the portrayals of rocky home lives and marriages on the brink in TV soap operas and primetime dramas, an overwhelming majority of physicians' spouses and partners say they are happy with their relationships, Mayo Clinic research shows.

Three-quarters of the physicians' spouses or partners who responded to the survey were female, and 40% of the respondents had a full-time job and worked at least 30 hours a week outside of the home, the survey shows.

"It gives us data that shatters some stereotypes," Tait Shanafelt, MD, lead author of the survey and a Mayo Clinic hematologist and oncologist, said in an interview.

"First, in a large proportion of relationships the physician is a woman. In the majority of the relationships, the partner has a career of his or her own and is working a substantial number of hours outside the home," he says. "It also shatters the stereotype that is promulgated on TV that physicians' personal relationships are always of poor quality and they are at risk of divorce. That doesn't bear out in the data."

Terry L. Mac Math (3/29/2013 at 3:02 PM)
I found this article interesting and entirely different from my professional experience. Given that I can name 50+ colleagues divorced one or more times during their medical careers, satisfaction rates of the sort noted in this 'survey' strike me as dubious at best. I wonder if by chance the author correlates his findings with the stage of the physicians' careers and whether the responding spouse is the first, second or fifth for the physician in question. It would also be interesting to correlate 'satisfaction' with specialty and stage of career. I only wish that the majority of the physicians I've had the pleasure of working with over these past years were as satisfied as the comments of these'spouses'might imply.